A few days after the San Bernardino shootings I attended a Council of Foreign Relations luncheon headlined by William Perry, the former defense secretary under Bill Clinton. In the wake of the Paris attacks, he had a less than cheery assessment of the world's nuclear dangers that lost the appetites of most of us in attendance. In particular, for anyone living in New York or Washington DC he had a special warning, there is a high likelihood that a terrorist will set off a dirty bomb in either of these cities within the next year. Such a bomb could make uninhabitable for decades a one square mile section of the city and the knowhow to set off such a device is well within the capacity of various terror groups, he said. With that, just about everyone took a pass on the chocolate mousse.
That night I went to the movies near Lincoln Center and walked back to the East Side surveying the endless number of crowded "soft targets" offered along NY streetscapes to any diabolical person with a readily available assault weapon at his or her disposal. Forget about the obvious places like Times Square or the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in midtown (which now happen to be guarded by seeming brigades of machine gun toting police), these Upper West streets were full of easy marks--people headed to the concert halls and diners seated in rows of restaurants and bars along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. Then what about Greenwich Village or Williamsburg in Brooklyn or countless other gathering spot neighborhoods throughout the city--the crowds they attract are also vulnerable to chaos inducing attacks.
Back in the post-white flight era of 1970s and 1980s, the talk was America's major cities were doomed by ever lurking street violence and crime waves. Of course, the stanching of murder rates and improved policing has been essential to spurring the country's more recent urban renaissance. Safe streets and exuberant throngs have buried most concerns since—tourists continue to flow into New York, DC, and San Francisco in record numbers and the millennial/baby boomer move-back in trend maintains its pace.
But there is nothing like anxiety over safety and the threat of mayhem to push people away from places, and our great cities in particular. And not surprisingly Paris suffers through what I would expect to be a temporary period of tourist cancellations.
Talk of a dirty bomb is nothing new and a friend who also attended the luncheon checked in with a former big wig at the CIA she knows who calmed her down by reminding her he lives in Manhattan too with his family and has no inclination to move out.
The world's great cities make the most logical, impactful targets and worst case scenarios are born of discomfiting events—the smart bomb worry was front and center after 9-11 too. It's hard to discount a former esteemed Secretary of Defense, but then most of the recent mass violence in the U.S. occurs in banal suburbs or secondary cities like San Bernardino, and the 33,000 deaths from guns every year in this country happen in just about Anywhere USA.
The masses of people streaming through Manhattan at this Christmas time provide some measure of reassurance that fear has not taken over… That's something to celebrate in this holiday season… Happy New Year.
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Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
